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Leadership
- Lessons from Toyota
Liak Teng Lit
Chief Executive Officer
Alexandra Hospital
11 August 2007
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Leadership :
Bullshit or Fertilizer ?
To be presented at
Public Service Human Capital Conference
21 August 2007
3
4
5
8,093
7,361
5,180
4,424
4,890
3,802
3,377
2,336
1,609
478
0
15
3
12
23
155
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2006
Production (Toyota & Lexus brand) in Thousands
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Brief History of Toyota
1937
Toyota Motor Co Ltd founded by Kiichiro Toyoda
1950
Financial crisis, labour dispute, Kiichiro resigned
1957 First export to USA
1989
Lexus launched
1997 Hybrid car Prius launched
2002
Toyota entered Formula 1
2006 Toyota overtook GM to be No 1 producer
Model AA (1936)
Corolla (1966)
Lexus LS400
Prius
F1
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Toyota Leaders
1924 Sakichi Toyoda
Automatic Loom
1937 Kiichiro Toyoda
Toyota Motor Co
1950s Taiichi Ohno
Toyota Production System
1950s Shotaro Kamiya
Toyota Motor Sales
1989
Yukiyasu Togo & Ichiro Suzuki Lexus
1997
Fujio Cho
Hybrid car
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Seagull Leadership
• Fly in from afar
• Look good
• Make lots of noise
• Shit on everyone
• Fly off in glory into the sunset
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Toyota (Home Grown) Leadership
Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work,
live the philosophy and teach it to others
Taiichi Ohno
Katsuaki Watanabe
Fujio Cho
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Bottom-up
Top down
General management
expertise
In-depth understanding
of work
Builder of Learning
Organisations
(here is our purpose
and direction. I’ll guide
and coach)
Facilitator
(you’re empowered)
Bureaucratic
Manager
(follow the rule!)
Task Master
(here is what to do and
how to do it)
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Culture of Collaboration
Many Toyota leaders have worked on the production
line and have sold cars.
Therefore leaders respect people on the frontlines and
people at all levels contribute to decision.
- From 0 to 60 to World Domination
NYT Magazine Feb 2007
Jidoka